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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27404761">Wait With Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistemology/pseuds/epistemology'>epistemology</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Not Beta Read, Sad Dick Grayson, Sad Ending, Sad Jason Todd, jaydick-flashfic: ghosts, kind of, major character death is who you expect, we all know what happens</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:33:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,639</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27404761</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistemology/pseuds/epistemology</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason is dead, and Dick mourns. Life goes on.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dick Grayson &amp; Jason Todd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Jaydick Flash Fanwork Challenge</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Wait With Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jason opens his eyes.</p><p>That was peculiar. He didn’t expect to have eyes, or at least not ones he could open. If he isn’t dead, then he really should be in a hospital somewhere, or maybe still buried underneath the rubble of the warehouse.</p><p>He shouldn’t be able to open his eyes.</p><p>Jason sits up to find that he is tucked safely in his bed in the Manor, clothes scattered about the floor in the same way as when he’d left for Ethiopia. There’s a book lying open face down on his bedside table. Did he do that? Dick must have been in his room because there’s no way Jason would treat one of his books so carelessly. He reaches out to move it, to tuck the bookmark lying nearby between the pages, and— </p><p>Jason freezes.</p><p>His hand passed through.</p><p>He allows himself another moment to stay stock still, and then he waves his hand uselessly, watching as it never connects with the solid form of the book. Then he puts it on the table—or tries to. It passes through that as well. Further investigation reveals he was never lying in his bed to begin with, only floating listlessly above it in a cruel parody of sleep.</p><p>He wants to punch something. Wants to feel his fist connect with the hard surface of the wall, but everything he touches feels cold and insubstantial, like the fog that gathers over Gotham Bay at night. Jason thinks he might have had a panic attack, if he were breathing at all, but that’s one more thing that’s wrong with him. The comforting rise and fall of his own chest was gone, replaced by a stillness that scared him more than the fact that he was dead.</p><p>But he was ignoring that, for now.</p><p>Experiment showed he could pass through walls and floors and ceilings as well. Jason isn’t particularly ready to be looking on the bright side, but at the very least, it takes way less time to reach the kitchen.</p><p>Alfred isn’t there.</p><p>But Dick is.</p><p>Jason knows that he won’t answer, but he tries anyway. “Dick? Dickie?”</p><p>The silence he gets in response is more than telling as Dick stares straight ahead, mug of tea untouched in front of him. Jason sits on—or rather, floats gently above—the chair next to him, waiting for him to move, but he doesn’t, not for a few minutes, when he finally lifts the cup to his mouth, only to grimace at what must be cold tea. Jason wishes he could drink some tea. Alfred’s tea had always had remarkable calming properties, even if Jason is loath to admit it. Drinking tea with Alfred is one of his favorite activities.</p><p>Was. Was one of his favorite activities.</p><p>Jason wouldn’t be drinking anything anytime soon.</p><p>He stares at the cup, willing it to go away, because if he can’t drink it, no one can. (And he felt a strange satisfaction at it being too cold for Dick, even if Dick’s depressed mood and seeming inability to reheat it concerned him.)</p><p>“C’mon Dick. What are you doing here?” he whispered. Dick, of course, doesn’t take any notice, but he does rise from the chair and leave out the back, slamming the door behind him. </p><p>Jason goes to find Bruce.</p>
<hr/><p>Dick does not show up at the Manor for the next few weeks. Jason barely notices, except in those times Alfred mentions him to Bruce, who typically shuts down the conversation immediately. They’re fighting again, Jason realizes, but that’s nothing new.</p><p>He busies himself with learning how to be dead instead. Once he gets the hang of the way his body responds to everything without him being able to feel it, Jason follows Bruce around the cave, trying to learn about every case and then fighting the overwhelming desire to be able to slam his fist into something every time he can’t help.</p><p>Sometimes he follows Alfred, when following Bruce becomes too much. He watches as Alfred busies himself in the kitchen, placing spectral hands over his as he cooks. He sees Alfred cry, once. It’s something Jason has never seen before, and he flees the room at first, only to return minutes later and wrap Alfred in his arms, wishing more than anything that he could touch.</p><p>Inexplicably, Jason gets used to being a ghost, Grows accustomed to it. Eventually, doors swinging straight through him cease to surprise and become normal, in an eerie kind of way. He develops a routine of sorts. Follow Alfred around in the morning, take a break to explore the Manor and test how far his limits as a ghost extended (to the edge of the grounds), and then haunt Bruce every night as he goes about his work as Batman. </p><p>It’s not nearly as exciting as his life before, but it’s something. Bruce and Alfred become his lifeline, if he can even call it that. The one thing keeping him from going crazy stuck in that big, empty house day after day, night after night. Jason thinks it would help if he could sleep, but that’s just one other thing that being a ghost lacks, that he misses about being alive.</p><p>Living people didn’t know how good they had it.</p><p>Dick shows up again, inevitably, and Jason isn’t prepared for what he sees when he does. He knows Dick and Bruce have been fighting, knows things aren’t going well in Dick’s life based on the way Bruce and Alfred talk, but it does nothing to ready him for what an absolute mess his brother actually is. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, if the bags under his eyes are anything to go by, and it doesn’t take long for Jason to notice the inside-out shirt and bruises littering his body, more than what he should have from a normal night’s patrol.</p><p>“What’s going on with you, Dickiebird?”</p><p>Jason follows as Alfred leads Dick to the living room in the back of the Manor that was used instead of the nice parlor at the front. Following is his only source of distraction now, and he uses his one ability as a ghost to eavesdrop as Alfred offers concern for Dick, who counters with empty reassurances.</p><p>Then Alfred leaves, and it’s just the two of them.</p><p>“Hey Dickie,” he whispers, but Dick doesn’t look up.There’s a moment where maybe, <em> maybe, </em> he notices something, and he glances in Jason’s direction. A sudden chill or the feeling of someone’s eyes. But then it passes, and Dick stands up.</p><p>He walks to the table across the room and picks up a book. Belatedly, Jason realizes Dick was never looking at him at all, but through him, at the book on the table, one of his own, which he had never finished before he died. A real shame. He’d been getting to the good part.</p><p>Dick thumbs through the pages until a bookmark falls out. He reads a few lines, or maybe he just stares blankly at the pages, and when he looks up again Jason can see tears in his eyes.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Jason,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”</p><p>Jason doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for, can’t even guess, but as Dick sinks onto the couch, he makes a futile effort to embrace him. It’s never worked before, not with Alfred, not with Bruce, but right now Jason wants more than anything to hug Dick and to tell him he’s forgiven. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone openly weep like this before. Dick’s head is in his hands, hunched over with his elbows propped up on his thighs, whole body heaving with every sob.</p><p>“It wasn’t your fault, Dick, if that’s what you’re worried about. You were off planet. There was nothing you could do.”</p><p>It’s sad, but it’s the truth, and Jason speaks it for himself, knowing Dick cannot hear. He settles onto the couch, floating so as to look like he’s sitting right up next to Dick, knees touching.</p><p>He begins again. “Did you know, when I first met you, all I wanted was for you to like me. You were so mad at B at first ‘cause he replaced you, but when you finally talked to me, and you took me on that mission and gave me your old costume? That was the best day of my life.</p><p>“I had a pretty fucking good life, Dick.”</p><p>He reaches out a hand and ghosts it on top of Dick’s. As if he feels it, Dick lowers the hand from his face and places it in his lap, the other following. Jason watches as he takes a deep breath and then wipes his eyes. He looks like a mess, and Alfred will surely notice, but there’s something different about him now. Jason doesn’t believe that a good cry has the power to change much, but he believes even less that he has the power to help from beyond the grave.</p><p>He’s useless, he reminds himself. <em> Dick doesn’t need you floating around him to make him feel better. </em></p><p>And yet, as Dick turns to leave the room, he glances back one more time, and then he cracks a smile. A small one, but it’s there, and it’s genuine. Jason smiles back.</p><p>Dick doesn’t return to the Manor for another week, but when he does, he laughs with Alfred and tells stories about the Titans, and sometimes he comes back with Kori or Wally or Donna. </p><p>Jason wants a lot of things. He wants to be able to touch again, wants people to hear him, wants to be alive. More than anything he wants his family back, something he’d never had before Bruce took him in and didn’t appreciate enough while it lasted.</p><p>He doesn’t always get what he wants.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>As always, my <a href="https://epistemologys.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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